Tibet’s First Electric Railway Opens Between Lhasa and Nyingchi
The 435-kilometre line opened on 25 June 2021, following the Yarlung Tsangpo east from Lhasa to the forests of Nyingchi in three and a half hours. It crosses the river sixteen times.
A railway between Lhasa and Nyingchi opened on 25 June 2021. It is 435 kilometres long and was the first electrified line in Tibet. Nyingchi, in the south-east of the region, had not been served by a railway before.
The line
The route leaves Lhasa to the south, meets the Yarlung Tsangpo river and follows its valley east, between the Himalaya and the Nyenchen Tanglha range. It crosses the river sixteen times. There are 47 tunnels and 121 bridges, and more than 90 per cent of the track lies above 3,000 metres. It is a single track with nine main stations, among them Shannan, the station for the Yarlung valley, where the first Tibetan kings ruled.
Trains run at up to 160 kilometres an hour and take about three and a half hours, against five or more by the highway. They are Fuxing sets built for the plateau, with a system that adds oxygen to the air in the carriages. The line forms the western end of a railway that is being built between Lhasa and Chengdu.
A different Tibet
Nyingchi surprises visitors who know Tibet from pictures of bare plateau. It lies at about 3,000 metres, some 600 metres lower than Lhasa, and receives the monsoon through the gorge of the Yarlung Tsangpo. The valleys are forested with pine and spruce. In late March and April the villages are surrounded by wild peach trees in flower, against a background of snow peaks. The highest of them is Namcha Barwa, at 7,782 metres, around which the river makes its great bend before it falls towards India.
The lower altitude makes the district an easier introduction to Tibet than Lhasa. Songtsam’s Namcha Barwa lodge, which faces the mountain, opened shortly before the railway, and the area is one of those described in our guide to China’s most distinctive places to stay.
For travellers
Foreign visitors need a Tibet travel permit, arranged in advance through an agency, and travel with a guide. Seats on the right-hand side of the train, heading east, face the river for much of the way. Nyingchi also has an airport with flights from Chengdu and other cities. Many itineraries now arrive there, travel to Lhasa by rail and leave by the Chengdu flight or by the older railway across the plateau to Qinghai.